What IS Maladaptive Daydreaming?
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- Опубліковано 19 вер 2022
- this episode is very important to me as it is a pension for truth on a topic near and dear to my heart. If you are unfamiliar with the term Maladaptive Daydreaming, it is a term that was created in the early 2000's to describe a dissociation symptom where people create entire worlds inside of their imagination. In this Episode I talk to Evie, who is someone I found In the small community of Maladaptive Daydreamers online. This is our first time talking with each other. Neither of us our licensed professionals; just girls exchanging our own experiences
her channel: / uniquesouls
I have been a whole superstar in my fantasy world 😂seriously I'd rival Michael Jackson. What's better is my pitch IRL is shocking. This video had my crying tears of laughter and sadness. Such is the comedy/tragedy interplay of all things life.
What Charlotte's psychiatrist said: "As long as you’re [maladaptive daydreaming], you’ll never grow up" really ran all the home for me. I'm 24 and I've lost a decade of my life to this and also made some very poor life choices (around letting opportunities go by without endeavour) because I've had so many safe comfort worlds to retreat to when I didn't want to face life. Something I am coming to terms with, is that whether I wanted it or not, I am here and not in another dimension existing as pure light energy...the world demands a certain level of participation if you expect to be a part of the world. I think many of us who MD are traumatised/empaths (sorry I know this word has really done the colloquial rounds lately) who are able to cope by retreating into a virtual reality that we can completely control. I've experienced this as an inability to stay present, as a real rejection of my existence, almost trying to manipulate myself into believing that I'm not actually here. Dare I say most of us are creative types? We get lost in film and words and games but having a necessary confrontation or lodging a tax return is like coughing up bile. To others it can look like laziness, weirdness, depression (which I think is likely a common denominator along with anxiety) or wasted potential. That pressure to make up for lost time becomes even MORE overwhelming and then to deal with that heaviness, even existential dread, naturally one retreats to MD.
Well said 🙌🏽
you summed up my life
I can relate to this a lot. I had a traumatic childhood and I’ve been maladaptive daydreaming since I was 13, I’m 27 now.
It started with music, when I would listen to music I would imagine a video to go along with it. Despite going to therapy the daydreaming has actually intensified over the last few years and now I imagine ideal scenarios. For some reason I always look to the past and imagine myself correcting mistakes I’ve made in the past that I really regret
Omggggg. Wtf. I relate to this so hard. I pace up and down listening to music and imagine I’m in a music video. I go to the park and go on the swings and day dream about random scenarios I wish would happen. I also go back to past events and recreate them in my head.
Maladaptive daydreaming is the only thing that helps me go to sleep and quiet my mind too! This is crazy, thank you so much for giving me language and words to something I do that I’m aware of but I didn’t realize it was a thing. I’m in shock, thank you thank you for sharing.
This is so interesting. How wild that you went your whole life just thinking everyone else had this experience, too. Being human is so strange. You either assume you're the only one in the world to feel something, or that everyone's experience is like yours. Been really loving all of these recent episodes, Char
For those who have no friends, like me. For those who haven't had, or don't have, excitement like me.... Wow, I have "lived" such pleasurable moments with daydreams, but at the same time I am feeling stupid because I have never actually experienced such fantasized situations. Wow, my childhood was so boring, tedious, frustrating and suffering, just like now at my 18. I started daydreaming at 12.
After I watched a report on a program that no longer exists, it was a show about child singers who didn't act like children. There was a boy. At the time I thought he was beautiful, but anyway. I was very innocent and childish. It's insane, paradoxical even. I remember that at school, in class, anything I found funny (ah, nonsense and hilarious things done by students in class...) I would instantly take it to become reverie, as if I was the one who caused the situation. I would "take it" for myself. Wow (gee, how many "Wow". It's all too impressive for me), I would get so excited to get home after school. Oh my gosh, what a strong feeling, and to grab my phone and headphones and start doing the magic.
Unfortunately, there is not a lot of extensive research on excessive daydreaming. There are no medicines to control them. And there are psychologists who don't even know what daydreaming is about. I want to know if daydreaming can cause attention deficit and/or hyperactivity. I wanted to know if the hyperactivity and deficit medications could be used to treat the daydreams. My depression started in December 2021. The daydreaming didn't help much with the melancholy caused by the depression. It got really bad to study, but not before the depression. The daydreams got in the way. To study for exams was an insane shame. I only managed to get into a college through a complementary selection process of remaining vacancies from an institution in another state, which wasn't even the one I lived in, with a low score. I didn't even have to take the vestibular. I'm in Economics, I wanted Pedagogy because I don't need to do a lot of head banging, anyway. I wanted more videos and UA-cam channels that talked about daydreams.
Daydreams are there. They damage a lot of things. I don't know if I have bipolar disorder, but anyway, I don't have both phases, as far as I can see, but in February, and apparently in December, I had a moment of insane euphoria that lasted a couple of days. I went mad. The daydreams got even more pleasurable, but anyway. I want to make my daydreams open to the world. A great fact about daydreaming is that it will make you less social. There is no game, relationship, movie, anime that makes daydreaming less interesting. It's an extremely and absurdly peculiar disorder.
I've been a victim of intense maladaptive daydreaming for as long as i can remember since childhood.. it would usually start when somebody wanted me to sit still and be quiet. after a moment my thoughts would wonder off into oblivion and i would be completely unresponsive, meaning someone would have to snap me out of it by loudly calling my name or touching me. as i grew a little older these episodes would be accompanied by shaking, where i would put my hands together and, almost vibrate. this would give my thoughts an almost physically REAL nature, as if i was really there, in my thoughts, feeling, seeing, hearing, smelling everything, like a video game that plays in your mind that you have full control over, as i kept growing, into the teens, the "shaking" would be accompanied by walking around my room, and sometimes whispering different dialogues that i was imagining in my mind coming from either myself or another character.. but still, as ive gotten older so has this disorder progressed into a full blown disability, the shaking turns violent, shaking my hands as if im trying to shake something off of them, frantically walking around and not just whispering but talking loudly to myself FULL conversations, my fingers and facial expressions seizing up like a seizure, if left unattended it can last for hours, only being able to break out of it for a few minutes before being sucked back into it.. sometimes my brain gets tired and feels like its just going to shut off, its effected relationships, jobs, daily activities..ive even been in video calls where i really have to watch it or ill start whispering to myself right there in the call. It truly becomes a burden, some people think "oh cool you can just go into your own little world" NO.. it becomes a real burden, ive been working on assembly lines and ill just forget im there and start talking to some character in my mind or start mentally acting out a scenario while im working.. these scenarios can be acts of: love, hate, violence, sorrow, rescue, vengeance, sexual, they can be either full of apathy or empathy, with the strongest of these being violence and vengeance felt at extreme levels over a simply non-existent scenario. and it continues to this day. but being around others, being distracted by something like a good movie, or eating, or just doing something that requires your immediate attention can turn these things off. but being alone, or entertaining something that fuels your imagination are strong triggers and will cause an episode.. i hope anyone reading this, and made it this far, now has a better understanding of what this disorder really is, and what it can progress into without care.. thank you for reading. this disorder needs strong awareness
Alll from sit still and be quite…. :/ at least our generation will change so much. I really believe that. And I completely relate to this, it’s hard not to feel anger sometimes about how simple it would have been to be payed attention too before this happened. But I can’t even explain how I’m feeling knowing how intensely some people have experienced this.
This was so interesting and I actually 10000% relate, I thought everyone did this as well. It would be SO interesting if you did an episode on enneagrams. I’m an enneagram 4 and feel like maladaptive daydreams are common for my type.
You guys are the first people whom I can relate to on this. I’ve been doing this for years to go to sleep, and it also carry’s on into my dreams. Thus my dreams are a continuation of my “dream world” The dreams are so vivid and detailed and is somehow all connected. Sometimes i’ll have memory flashbacks and it takes me a few seconds to realize it wasn’t a “life memory” but a “dream memory”. I’ll also have random songs that come on and that trigger my dream world, and a scene that has either happened in my dream world, or something i want to happens in it, will start playing in my head. It’s like a place i can escape
This could be completely unrelated, but I resonated with the fact that you can disassociate at certain times, like when you're trying to sleep. I tend to sit for hours at a time and pick at my nails/skin almost unconsciously (which is a type of OCD that I am not too familiar with), and my mind wanders while I do this, but once I snap back to reality I can never fully recall what I was thinking of. It's almost like my conscious switches off
Discovered your podcast (and you!) recently and am binge watching it. This one hit me hard. You put a name to something I've been doing all my life....I also thought everyone did this..really love your insightful and interesting youtube videos. You're gorgeous, but that is the least interesting thing about you. So intelligent. (From a fellow Toronto girl!) :-)
Literally heard about this a few days ago so I’m super excited to watch this
Damn I think I have this sometimes I can’t even tell what really happened to me or if it’s from my mind. It’s super hard and draining but its not something that can be stopped. Prolonged maybe but never stopped, for me personally
I think it’s more than important to note this Evie girl is not a licensed professional. While people’s personal experiences hold value, this can be incredibly biased and misleading for some people to hear. Even the linguistics used to describe these disorders and behaviors is so crucial to avoid misinformation and misinterpretation. Dissociation and maladaptive daydreaming are both very real coping mechanisms and opening a conversation about them could be really helpful if done appropriately.
Added to description!
Since there is absolutely no real study on MDD yet, its evolving and new knowledge area, Evelene's experiences are very valuable. She is articulate and has opened up the conversation actually. Somer's, The Israeli Psychologist mentioned this in 2002 before that it was unheard of. It does not have a separate diagnosis and thus practitioners may not know much about this. At this point all we have is people like Evelyn who are brave enough to discuss. Also thank you Charlotte.
Fascinating podcast! From what I have heard (on one of the podcasts with Dr. Andrew Huberman), our brains don't really hold an exact representation of the world around us, but a symbolic one. The brain operates in symbols because it is more efficient. It is likely that everything in a maladaptive daydream is a representation of how our brains perceive certain aspects of the reality, and therefore has a hidden meaning.
Please more episodes like this loved the vibe
I like it more than my real life. I'm 20 now I have been doing it since I was 10 and it got worser and worser throughout my teenage years. I have seemed to kinda stop now cuz lifes busy but offcourse I don't know who I am outside of daydreaming which is something I am trying to figure out. Like what qualities are good in me
Interesting! I absolutely cannot daydream that vividly haha. I just have fuzzy concepts in my head and just accept each one and move on with the train of thought because I know what the concept is supposed to be even if I'm not seeing it sharply in my head. The only time I've ever felt like a daydream was a super crisp image is when I'm at the brink of falling asleep.
I thought I was the only one who did this.
does music effect you at all? i notice when i maladaptive daydream it’s usually to music that i’m listening to
for me it does.. some songs do everytime i listen to it. But I can't stop since it's addicting so i put those songs on loop😭
I used to do this before I went to bed when I was in the 6th grade and I almost completely forgot about it till now. I had a whole ritual in my head to get to the spot in my head. I didn't know it was a thing or had a name. Another thing to work on.
Char whats your personality type? I have a strong feeling you're INFP or ENFP
My weekly dose of therapy
While I do not experience this maladaptive daydreaming, I have learned the power of the mind though EMDR. I don’t quite understand what these disassociations are, but I am eager to learn. Thank You for sharing.
I do this all the time
Charlotte, what form of trauma do you think has caused you these dreams and how do these dreams impact your life apart from helping you sleep?
i have some queries as i didn't know the thing i have been doing for past 7years has a name MD until recently . where do i post it?
Hi try posting questions here ua-cam.com/users/SomerClinic This is Dr. Somer who actually coined the term.
Charlotte, try hot yoga. That’s the one thing that finally got the voice in my head to stop. Also, I recommend Michael singer’s book “The Untethered Soul”
29:18 omg same!
Find people in the light
finally I don't feel aloneeeeee
What do you mean that some people don't do this!!??? I am unwell. Shook!!
ALSO YES!!! IT HAS TO BE SOMEWHAT ROOTED IN REALITY!!!!
wow I dont think I have it but I love daydreaming and sometimes really a lot I have like a few movies Ive made in my head with characters and everything 😅
I have a question 🙋🏻♀️ can you get rid of maladaptive daydreaming 🤔?
i think through therapy like cbt as it’s a coping mechanism so working through it and self awareness can help
I have blue red
Also this would be an amazing script for a movie, like inception but about maladaptive daydreaming
This person has green hair
Maladaptive synethesia
Hey, I have this shit too, ruined my adolescence, literally, and I think what you said about it in the min 21:00 is fucked. Come on, you are making people continue this destructive path. People with depression and people with anxiety want to have it too, ''Oh, my mind is so unique, I have this, this is part of me, of my personality, and these people who don't have it are just a bunch of losers, bla bla bla'' come on. This is an impediment to your life. This is the reality that we live in. These are the only people we will ever meet. These are the only real experiences we will ever have. Life is short. Accept it, suffer it, and enjoy it.
I hear you Arlen. There are 2 things to this. 1. Eveleen is so dependent on this (for her trauma) that she would not be able to cope without this. 2. Since MDD is a coping mechanism, do not try just jump out of it - without a coping mechanism you will fall flat on face. Instead try to bolster yourself with other healthier coping mechanism - MDD will fade away.
Don't judge Eveleen, it is a fact not every person facing trauma do MDD and cope differently. So the uniqueness is a fact.
@@ABhattacharya I get you, but this is becoming very common with people who have mental disorders. I'm not saying it's not special, I'm saying that grabbing on to that is actually quite toxic, because even if we don't say it, it makes us feel superior to 'normal' people, and that makes us not want to even try to heal
@@arlensiu2059 Maybe a push back given mental disorders are so stigmatized? Also some mental disorders do happen to gifted people. Bipolar Depression or unipolar Depression are common among higher intelligence people - there have been studies on that. But having a mental disorder can’t be easy I am guessing. What’s wrong in at least acknowledging a little creativity factor. However I agree this should not mean accepting an unhealthy coping mechanism and reveling in it. You are right Evelyn does not want to get better - or even control it.
@@ABhattacharya No, it's not easy. It's shit, and even though it's here and we should accept it, we should try not to fall in to the "I'm a special little boy" type of mentality, because in the long run you will grab on to it.
@@arlensiu2059 I concur.
Bwa haha
I LOVE YOUR PODCASTS CHARLOTTE 🫶 also I love how I was the 7th like, because 7 is my lucky number.